Surprise! It looks like Google’s been planning a smartwatch for quite a while

The watch wars are quickly heating up, and Google seems to have been quietly working on a product for longer than anyone had previously imagined. Almost 2 years ago, WIMM Labs released the WIMM One, one of the first Android smartwatches. Several months later, the company essentially shut down and replaced most of its website with this message:

Almost three years ago WIMM set out to make information more personal, accessible, and connected. The WIMM One proved the concept and inspired many to take a fresh look at wearable technology.

During the summer of 2012, WIMM Labs entered into an exclusive, confidential relationship for our technology and ceased sales of the Developer Preview Kit. Existing WIMM One owners can continue to synchronize their devices at this time as well as contact us at help@wimm.com.

We'd like to thank all of our developers for their interest and willingness to experiment with our platform and look forward to exciting advances in the wearable market.

Today, GigaOM is reporting that the shutdown was due to an acquisition by Google. The company stealthily purchased WIMM a year ago and merged it with the Android team. Since then, it has been quietly working to fulfill Google's smartwatch ambitions.

GigaOM points out that Woodside Capital Partners, the investment bank that assisted with the deal, spilled the beans on its website with the image you see above. Several WIMM employees have also updated their Linkedin profiles with their new employer.

One of WIMM's biggest selling points was a fully fledged app store, which is still up and running on WIMM's website. The store features additional watch faces, a Facebook app, a pedometer, and even tiny video games. It looks like Google has been charging full steam ahead on its smartwatch project for some time.

Since I started wearing my Pebble, I don't need to check the phone nearly as much. Email alerts, phone calls, sms, even basic weather - it all displays on my watch and I can easily decide if I want/need to fish my phone out at that point. I also usually have the volume on my phone as off and vibration turned off.

I was looking forward to the Pebble apps and controls but I am surprised by how rarely I need to actually refer to my phone now.

WIMM's intentions with their app development platform/store were great, but I see Google doing something similar to Google Glass with their smartwatch: I'm betting the apps will be generally limited to displaying info cards, with the user's android phone tethered via bluetooth and acting as a central hub. Why? Size and battery life.

This watch needs to be sexy. Glass also had to be attractive, but it was the first product of its kind. Watches have been around forever and people wear them for fashion as much as function. The easiest way to make this watch fail is for it to be ugly and/or too chunky. It also needs to have stellar battery life. Again, people have existing ideas about what is and is not acceptable in a watch. It needs to last at least a few days on a single charge. The only way to accomplish these feats is to limit on-device processing and screen on time.

Google's Mirror API for Glass would pretty much accomplish all of these things for their smartwatch. Actually, it makes a lot of sense for Glass and their smartwatch to use the same SDK and APIs. That way, building an app ecosystem for one will simultaneously help the other. Glass users get cards sent to their face, smartwatch users get them sent to their wrist.

The more I think about it, the more I think I would be totally satisfied with a watch that only had the functionality that Glass has now. Add in biometric sensors (a la Jawbone UP) and give me cards about my sleep cycle and daily activity and I would be completely smitten. Do I want to kill the battery life on my watch by playing Ingress? Not really. My phone is better for that. I just want it to tell me what time it is and give me relevant cards at relevant times.

I almost wonder if this was intentional. The biggest thing that is going for smartwatches at the moment is the massive amount of hype, and hype is a great thing for a product like this. Compare it to 3D TVs, that had no hype, were expensive and when released no one cared. Now it's a competition between products that don't even exist, we're almost expected to want to buy at least one of them.

Plus, that Google/WIMM image was only uploaded in July (looking at the URL for the image, and it's on their Work page as of August 1st), that's a really long time after the deal went through. Surely if there was a confidential deal they wouldn't have suddenly decided, months later, to suddenly slap it on their website for no real reason. Most of the other items on their "Work" page were listed when the deals actually happened.

Although it could simply be they were required to shut up for a certain period of time and that has lapsed. But I'd like to think this is google playing their hands.

Awesome, I bought a WIMM watch about 2 years ago to do prototyping, and loved it from a flexibility/development point of view... Only thing that sucked was that it was running Android 2.1, as some of the bugs I found were fixed in 2.2. Now maybe I can get an updated one that is newer, as at the time they said they were working on 2.3, but they never shipped it.

If there's one manufacturing thing Google's good at, it's making devices have no style, or one that makes you appear like a cyborg. That watch is UGLY. Compared to the Pebble, it's stuck in the '90s.

That's the old watch that WIMM made. It's pretty impressive for 2011.

Not really. Sony LiveView was out in 2010 and arguably looked better. Also, 2010 was the year of the 6th gen ipod nano which was smart enough to be called a smartwatch with the addition of a strap.

True, but the WIMM was much more capable, because you basically had everything Android could do at your disposal... I looked at a lot of the other watches when prototyping. The iPod Nano doesn't support Bluetooth outside of mFI/Sync Profile or GameKit, so talking to a PC/Phone over Bluetooth RFCOMM is flat out not possible.

Some of the other ones were all proprietary stuff running on the watch, that you had to develop for, so it wasn't as flexible.

The WIMM, I could talk to the sensors, bluetooth, wifi, etc, with existing Android APIs, I could run background services, I could have notifications, etc, etc.

I've been planning this for 40 years in my underground lair... A watch so sophisticated, so powerful, only the richest elite will be able to afford it. I will retail this fine device for... One... Million... Dollars!

I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no interest in wearing a watch, no matter if Google, Samsung, Apple, or whoever makes it. No matter how smart it is.

I wore a watch for many years, and it was useful back then. But it was also a hassle. I had to be careful to not bash it into things or slide it along things so that the crystal wasn't damaged. It had a tiny face that could only show a very limited amount of info at once. Even adding a date counter pushed the limits of its "display".

At this point, I see the watch--overall--as a design whose time has long passed.

You want a fashion accessory that also has smartphone aspects to it? Fine. Wear your smart watch or smart pendant or smart glasses or smart ring or whatever.

I wore a watch for many years, and it was useful back then. But it was also a hassle. I had to be careful to not bash it into things or slide it along things so that the crystal wasn't damaged. It had a tiny face that could only show a very limited amount of info at once. Even adding a date counter pushed the limits of its "display".

My watch is titanium so strong and light. The glass is sapphire and virtually indestructible. And it has a nice big analogue display, so perfectly readable.

The gold plate highlights are long gone, but the only damage is a scattering of tiny holes on the glass from that day I was angle grinding for hours and the watch was in the firing line of molten flecks of metal and grinding disk material, but you have to hold it up to the light at a weird angle and squint to see that.

I stopped wearing it because at work I've got my computer and outside work I try not to let the time of day rule my life - I like to look at the sun's position instead of a clock. Plus I've got my phone when I need it.

You want a fashion accessory that also has smartphone aspects to it? Fine. Wear your smart watch or smart pendant or smart glasses or smart ring or whatever.

I don't think anyone here cares much about fashion. I certainly don't.

My main interest is having something that vibrates when I get a call or email. My phone is always silent, I hate noises, and the phone vibrator is too weak in my pocket and too strong (loud) on my desk.

I wonder if smartwatches will be a security mechanism for other devices. For example, if your phone/tablet/pc is in close proximity to your watch, you can bypass security checkpoints. Or possibly require them to be paired for certain secure actions to take place. Security through division?

Since I started wearing my Pebble, I don't need to check the phone nearly as much. Email alerts, phone calls, sms, even basic weather - it all displays on my watch and I can easily decide if I want/need to fish my phone out at that point. I also usually have the volume on my phone as off and vibration turned off.

I was looking forward to the Pebble apps and controls but I am surprised by how rarely I need to actually refer to my phone now.

You need more granularity in your notification scheme. It is totally possible to get alerts only when you need them. OK, maybe not on IOS or Android, but that is just a software task.

I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no interest in wearing a watch, no matter if Google, Samsung, Apple, or whoever makes it. No matter how smart it is.

I wore a watch for many years, and it was useful back then. But it was also a hassle. I had to be careful to not bash it into things or slide it along things so that the crystal wasn't damaged. It had a tiny face that could only show a very limited amount of info at once. Even adding a date counter pushed the limits of its "display".

At this point, I see the watch--overall--as a design whose time has long passed.

You want a fashion accessory that also has smartphone aspects to it? Fine. Wear your smart watch or smart pendant or smart glasses or smart ring or whatever.

But count me out.

Same here. I've stopped wearing a watch more than ten years ago. Now all I have is an iPod Nano fitted into a watch casing, but I'm wearing it only in public transports and when walking in the street. It's too cumbersome most of the time.

Ron Amadeo / Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work.